Invisible Restraints

Back when I was a kid riding the school bus, I always sat in the front seat behind the driver. I did this because it afforded me the greatest protection from the constant stream of torment directed my way from kids who wanted to bully me because of my weight. It's not that the bus driver did anything to control them, but rather that the mere proximity of an adult and the limited access to me from that location helped curtail such behavior.

One day, the driver was approaching a stretch of road in what would be the "heart" of the tiny rural town in which my high school was located. An older woman had taken it upon herself to cross this main street at a random spot with no street light or crosswalk, and the bus driver had to stop essentially in the middle of a stretch of road where stopping wasn't supposed to happen in order to accommodate her slow progress across the street. I remember scoffing at the old lady's poor choice of location to cross and saying she should have looked for oncoming traffic and chosen a more appropriate spot at which to cross. The bus driver, herself a rather mature woman, got angry at me and scolded me for judging the pedestrian. She said that she knew that lady and that she had infirmities which made it difficult for her to walk and that I should have compassion for her.

This situation illustrates something that occurs almost certainly every minute of the day somewhere in the developed world. A person with physical difficulties which the outside world cannot detect with the naked eye observes a person doing something, acting a particular way, or, in the case of fat people, looking a certain way, and they make a judgement. They make their conclusions divorced from the facts, and they always declare the other party lacking.

When I was younger, and yet unencumbered by any sort of serious physical difficulties, this was a mistake I made. Now that I'm older, and have a whole host of issues which are holding me back, I know that people can seem fine in their outward appearance, but that problems that limit their capacity to do whatever they want to do including pursue better health are hiding behind the surface.

Recently, NewMe did a post about her anger and frustration about her knee and other problems which hold her back from fully enjoying her life or doing the things which will increase her rate of weight loss. Her post was a very timely one for me because I have also been encountering the same road blocks. I've actually been encountering them for decades, but recently have been running up against them more often since I've been trying to expand the range of activities I'm attempting. My body is not repaying me with increased flexibility and strength, but with pain and troubling side effects.

Lately, I've been trying to do some beginner yoga and dance DVDs in addition to walking and light weight lifting. Note that I do everything gradually because I'm all too aware of my limits and frailty. When I started walking, I started at a mere 5 minutes and weight lifting started at 5 reps. Slowly adding from there has mitigated some of the "growing pains", but certainly not eliminated them. I still suffer muscle aches and pains all of the time. The pain is with me every single day, but it is getting slowly less acute.

Last night, I did about 20 minutes of the most modest and rudimentary yoga routine. This was the third time I'd added a little more to my attempts with this particular DVD (Lilias Yoga for beginners). I only ever do the stretches and moves to my limited capacity because I do not have the flexibility to do even the basic moves she shows, so I'm not pushing myself into pain territory (though I do have to push to stretch - there's a point where you tax the muscle a bit, but don't damage yourself). All went pretty well, until about a half hour after when my ring finger on my right hand started to go numb. All night, my right hand and finger experienced intermittent numbness from compression of a nerve in my back due to inflammation. This is not a new experience for me. It used to happen to me all of the time when I first started walking.

My back problems may seem to exist as a result of my weight, but the truth is that there is a congenital defect in my spine. I first had back issues at the age of 12, and then they eventually went away. When they recurred with a vengeance in my 30's, I had testing which showed a little crack on an X-Ray on one of my lower vertebrae. I was told that I should lose weight, but that there was nothing I did to create this problem nor anything I could do to stop it aside from reducing my weight and increasing my fitness level to take the pressure off of my bone structure. Of course, there is a "chicken and the egg" issue at play. My back problems make it hard to lose weight or be fit, and not being fit or at a lower weight make my back issues worse.

So, here I am doing everything I can to lose weight and be stronger, including adding to and mixing up my exercise routine so that I can develop muscles in various directions, but I'm like a runner at the gate who is being held back from starting because of some invisible restraint. All of the will and motivation in the world doesn't do me any good as long as the flesh and bones are weak. It's important to keep in mind that "everything I can do" isn't the same as "everything one can do" for a particular individual. Just as I didn't know that old lady couldn't walk well enough to choose a better crossing spot or cross faster and shouldn't have judged her, people shouldn't be judging me or anyone else by simply looking at them. We don't know what circumstances are holding other people back, and we can't tell by just looking at them. Even more than not judging them, it's important to have compassion for the fact that they suffer not only because of the immediate effects (pain, slowness) of their limits, but because there are productive and enjoyable things they might want to do very badly (including but not limited to losing weight) and can't do because of them.

A Boring Bookkeeping Post

The biggest part of this blog is about my thoughts about losing weight and weight loss. However, it is at least supposed to be a record for me of how and what I'm doing. This record is not to "teach" others what to do or how to lose weight by following my supreme example (because, honestly, there are better blogs and more effective methods than mine out there for such things); it is to function as a sort of "diary" of my processes and how they are progressing.

I don't make these posts often because, frankly, they're a chore and not very interesting. However, I do believe it is important to occasionally make a note for my own reference of what I'm doing, and records of my exercise are sadly underrepresented in any sort of record of my processes.

Unlike most people who are trying to lose weight, exercise does not feature heavily into what I do. I don't get excited about it, nor do I hate it. I enjoy the movement, when I'm not in pain as a result of it. However, I'm not "Super Gym Girl" working out and building those muscles so that she can go around with hard, lumpy abs that one could use for beating a carpet on, or whatever they're supposed to be useful for. Frankly, I think well-defined stomach muscles are rather gross, even on men, but I realize I'm in a tiny minority. If you want a stomach like that, please don't be offended by my subjective observations. I'm just a crazy lady who used to weigh 380 lbs. (now 251) who writes a lot of navel-gazing posts and talks a lot about psychology. What do I know?

Here's the boring exercise record at present:

• At any rate, when I started, I couldn't walk 5 minutes without pain or 10 minutes without starting to feel out of breath. Now, I can walk without appreciable pain for up to 90 minutes and walk about 40-60 minutes most days. Sometimes I do that as a full circuit walking around my neighborhood and sometimes I take about 30 minutes and then walk in place while watching documentaries on my computer screen for as long as I want. The walking in place was something I started recently as the weather has gotten hotter and made longer walks outside unpleasant. Frankly, I think real walking is better and burns more calories. I have no evidence to support this (so don't believe me if you are skeptical... I'm not sure I believe me), but I think it has to do with balance and how you have to adjust and carry your body when walking around in the real world. 
• I started off with no weight lifting, but about 6 months ago (maybe, can't recall exactly), I started lifting two 1-kg. weights for 20 reps and upped it over 3 weeks to 50 reps. This caused my arms muscles to burn for days and was clearly too much too soon. I rested until all of the pain was gone and started again with only 5 reps, adding 1 per day each time I had no pain. I'm now up to 30 reps for one type of weight-lifting movement, 25 for another, and 15 for another. I continue to add in or hold at a certain number based on the pain or burning I experience.
• About two weeks ago, I started doing some "in front of the computer screen" exercises to try and work some other muscles. I used to do sit-ups when I lost weight in college, but my back pain will not allow for that. To do something for my stomach, I've been working on a "breath and hold" exercise. I sit in front of the computer with a timer set for a looping 12 second countdown on screen. I start the timer and take a deep breath and let it out. When the timer hits "6", I pull in my stomach muscle as far as possible, trying to suck it back toward the back of the chair. I hold it for 6 seconds and do an exhalation/inhalation as the next 6 seconds pass. I repeat this through 20 reps (I started at 5). Because I concentrate on the timer (and whatever video I'm watching), I keep count on my hands. I start with both hands in a fist on my knees and open each finger until all 10 are out then close them again for the next round of 10. This makes it easier to focus on the timer since tracking two sets of numbers and a documentary on the history of Rome is a little too much to manage mentally.
• I started to do leg lifts from in front of my computer. I sit with my hands on either side of the chair and lift my knees up as high as I can 15 times (I started at 5). This seems to work my back as well as my thighs. 

I will continue to add reps to all of these exercises as time goes by based on how much pain they cause, though I expect that I will have a maximum number (probably 50) based on the time the exercises take. I always start very low when I try these things because I've had enough experience to know that I'll suffer badly if I overdo it.

I walk nearly everyday (perhaps I do not do it 1 day out of every 20), because I don't have a car anyway and my bike is broken. I do the lifting and muscle exercises about 6 days a week, depending on pain or stiffness. I'll always take a day off if I feel my muscles need it.

I don't know if the exercises I'm doing really matter for weight loss. I do know that doing them makes me feel good and that it can't hurt to stretch and use muscles that may not see much use. I'm sure there are better and more productive things I could be doing, but I'm not yet ready to do them. It's not a mental thing, it's a physical one. I know my limits, and I am not going to push myself too far too fast. I've made that mistake before and seriously regretted it.

Phew. Boring bookkeeping post over. I will now return to normal programming. 

Overdoing Exercise

About 16 years ago, I was having problems with my knees and having difficulty walking around our home. At that time, I probably weighed less than I do now, but perhaps was having pain due to lack of fitness, age, or early arthritis. As I hobbled around, I complained and my husband in our twenty plus years of marriage said his one and only criticism of my weight. He said that I wouldn't be in pain if I "did something about it."

I was crushed and full of even more self-loathing than usual. I decided to push myself to exercise harder and do better because I was so upset that he disapproved of me. We had an exercise bike that I used despite knee and back pain, and the consequences were pretty disastrous. My back pain, because of the pressure on my spine from using this particular bike, got even worse as did my knees. I undoubtedly did more damage to my body through pushing myself (damage that may still be with me to this day), and my husband felt terrible that he'd said anything at all and contributed to that result. He never said anything to me like that again, which is much to his credit and a testimonial to his patience and compassion.

Since that time, I've tried to know my exercise limits, but every once in awhile, something really bad happens unexpectedly. Yesterday, my husband and I went out for an extended sojourn which included a fair amount of walking. It wasn't fast paced, but I had mildly strained a muscle in my back about 4 or so days ago and we were just out for too long. The muscle pain was one of those things you don't anticipate where you turn your body in some manner that you'd turned it many times before and suddenly there is pain. Since the initial strain, the pain wasn't too bad and tended to come and go. My daily walks of between a half hour and hour didn't aggravate it terribly, though it did get tender in the evenings. The pull is in my middle back and much higher than my usual back pain. I think it actually is related to the redistribution of my weight now based on weight loss so far. Muscles higher up are being effected differently, but also I move so much more that all of them are being tasked more.

Yesterday's ambitious walking and standing, which probably totaled close to two hours or so of time, aggravated this strained back muscle horribly. I was okay until I laid down to go to bed (though it was very sore during the last half hour of walking). Within about 20 minutes, I rolled over and was in agony. I couldn't lie down or move my right arm without incredible pain. I've had very intense pain like that before with my back, but this set off a strange response whereby I got very cold and my teeth started chattering. The pain was truly overwhelming and I decided to sleep on the sofa so that my labored movement and painful utterances didn't disturb my husband's sleep.

Overnight, the muscle mellowed out some. It's still very painful, but I can now move around more normally without soul shattering agony. That being said, I really need to take it easy for awhile and let this muscle heal more thoroughly. I'm thinking that this means doing nothing more than housework today, and keeping my walks down to less than 40 minutes until the pain is completely gone.

This was a case where I had a little problem that got exacerbated by overdoing it, even though what I did was relatively mild exercise. At my age (45), I need to be more careful with listening to my body's signals even when it doesn't seem that the problem is that serious, but the truth is that everyone needs to be careful about pushing themselves too far too fast. In this age of "The Biggest Loser" and slogans like "no pain, no gain", people think that pushing your body hard despite pain is best, but pain is a signal for damage. I'm not talking about discomfort or aching from using muscles, but authentic pain.

One of the things my earlier experience has illustrated is that a lot of people, including caring, loving, and concerned people like my husband, make the mistake of thinking that you would suffer less if you worked harder (i.e., exercised more) to lose weight. They also don't see health issues with invisible symptoms and show disgust or disdain when they see a fat person take the elevator or escalator instead of the stairs. My knees are still fairly wrecked, and while I do my best to get around as much as I can bear, I have a lot of problems with walking up steps.

Yesterday (and today as I'm still in a lot of pain), I was reminded that I can suffer serious consequences because my back is so messed up. People who see me in public don't know that I go home at night after walking just a bit too much and am in so much pain that I get uncontrollable chills as my body can't manage the intensity of what is happening to it. They just see a fat person who they think should move more. My message to them is that some of us are doing the best that we can, and are in no condition to be doing anything more than we are.

Of Exercise 2

My husband used to jog or run on a treadmill in our apartment for exercise. At one point, he developed a problem with his ankle and couldn’t do this type of exercise for a prolonged period of time. At that time, I suggested he join a local health club and take up swimming for exercise and he did so. Since that time, he has continued to swim between 3 and 5 days a week. After about 4-5 years, he has noticed that he has developed shoulder, arm and back muscles that weren’t there before. There’s body definition that gradually built up almost imperceptibly through the years as he has grown stronger and developed those muscles.

My husband’s situation regarding exercise and bodily changes comes to mind as I have continued to try and incorporate more exercise into my life. I mentioned before that I could barely walk before I started my current lifestyle change. My goal initially was simply to be able to approach daily movement such as standing, walking, and even lying down for long periods of time without pain. I still have pain, but it’s nothing like before, and I can walk now.

Last November, I posted that I had a recumbent bike that I couldn’t use because my stomach was too big and heavy and lay on my thighs so it was too hard to pedal on it. Yesterday, I dusted it off and gave it another go. My stomach is still an issue, but nothing like it was several months ago. Previously, I was lucky to last 3 minutes before my legs screamed “uncle”, and to do 9 minutes in total with breaks. Last night, I could manage 5 minutes before my inner thigh muscles made me give up the ghost. I managed 22 minutes with breaks every 5 minutes or so, before I decided it’d be wise to give it a rest. I was pretty pleased with this progress though I clearly have awhile to go.

Both my husband’s swimming-related body changes and my progress with the recumbent bike were good reminders that it is important to start slow and wait for your body to adapt to the demands you are placing on it. If you set the bar too high too early, you’re going to get frustrated and possibly injure yourself. It’s better to do something easier until you get stronger and lose some weight and become more flexible and capable of better movement.

I was frustrated initially that I couldn’t do very much because I felt more exercise would help my weight loss progress more rapidly, but I’ve learned that I need to be very patient about it. It’s not that I was ever lazy before and didn’t move (because I was always moving as much as I could). It was simply the case that I was too heavy to move without pain and needed to lose more weight to reduce the strain on my body before I could introduce further strain with more exercise. I've done exercise (walking, weight lifting, now the recumbent bike) five minutes at a time for months, and can really see the cumulative results by now.

So Creaky and Clumsy

I mentioned several posts ago that I had bought a DVD to try and do some more exercise. The disc I bought, incidentally, is "Moving Free Longevity Solution" by Mirabai Holland. I chose it because the reviews mention that it's good for people who have never taken a class in aerobics, and it mentions that it is good for older people. Though I'm 45, and not a boomer or senior, I feel like my mobility due to back and knee problems, as well as weight, is poor and I need something which won't tax me too much as a start.

I tossed the DVD in the player yesterday and gave it a try and I can't say that I was impressed with myself at all. Either because of poor coordination, lack of fitness, or weight-related issues, I couldn't keep up with the instructions. Ms. Holland is often a step or two ahead of me, even on the slow moves. I also have problems with my knees cracking like they're filled with broken glass on some of the positions so I'm going to have to modify things a bit.

The truth is that I got through only about 3-5 minutes of the dance before I stopped. I may be exceptionally clumsy, or just horrifically bad at free-flowing motions, but I just felt like I couldn't keep tabs on what I was supposed to be doing.

Despite what a big, lumbering ox I feel like, I'm going to keep at it slowly but surely. It seems that all of my exercise attempts have to be done by inches rather than by miles, or even feet. I feel like I'm crawling in terms of physical fitness improvement, and it can be discouraging. However, if I can walk up to 40 minutes when I couldn't walk even for 5 at first, I know that those inches will add up eventually and I'll get stronger.

In terms of this DVD, I'm guessing I'll have to repeat the first 3-5 minutes again and again before I catch on enough to do a few more minutes. Eventually, I'll be able to follow and keep up throughout the whole thing. That will be another milestone that I can note when the time comes.

Of Exercise

I don't write much about exercise because I don't do much of it. It's not that I hate it or don't want to do it, but rather that my body has been too hard to move and in too much pain during these initial phases of weight loss to do much. I want to exercise, but I really can't push myself too hard without being in pain or risking injury.

When I started out doing this in June or July of this year, I couldn't walk 5 minutes without sitting due to back pain and I also found I had to walk very slowly and felt like my heart was really pounding from the effort. My hips also ached rather badly within the first 10 minutes of walking. I've been walking at least 5 days a week and have now reached the point where I can walk 40 minutes without serious discomfort. I have almost reached the point where I walk out the door without fear of being in terrible pain if I can't find a place to sit and rest. If someone had told me 6 months ago that I'd be walking like I am now, I wouldn't have believed it. The progress hasn't been remarkable, but it has been a slow and steady improvement.

I have added in a little light weight lifting at this point to try and build strength and a little muscle mass. It's nothing too complex or sophisticated, but it really doesn't need to be. I bought a couple of plastic weights that can be filled with water at a dollar store. When full of water, they weigh about 2 lbs. each. I also have some wrist and ankle weights that I can add on later when I'm ready, but for now, I'm sticking with the 2 lb. weights which I do a range of motions with through about 20-25 reps in front of my computer. I have a friend who is a fitness instructor and he said less weight with more repetition is better for building strength.

I have a recumbent exercise bike and a treadmill at my disposal, but I can't really use either yet. The treadmill causes my back to hurt more than regular walking, and the bike is hard to use with my current body size. Last time I tried to use it several months ago, my hefty belly apron sat on my thighs such that I couldn't pedal for more than 3 minutes with that weight lying on my legs. I might be able to do it now that I've lost between 50-60 lbs., but I'm not sure yet. I'll probably give it another try sometime early next year when I want to step up my exercise. I'd like to try it again only when I'm more confidant that my gut isn't going to make it impossible. Failure is often worse than not trying when it comes to these things.

The next step for me is to try a DVD of dance-based aerobics designed for older people and people with arthritis. I don't know if it'll be possible, but I figure it'll be the next thing I can work slowly at accomplishing since the time when I can be outside simply walking is limited due to weather conditions.

The strange thing is that I'm actually wary of doing too much exercise for weight loss purposes because that was how I lost so much weight in college. I don't want to rely on burning up the calories to lose weight and prefer to focus on the food consumption control. If my life circumstances change, I may not be able to maintain an exercise routine, but I'll always be able to manage how much I eat.

Saboteurs

As I have mentioned previously, there was a time when I lost a tremendous amount of weight and kept it off for awhile only to gain it all and more back through time. The experiences that I had during that time taught me quite a few things about the way people think. One thing I learned is that people say they want you to lose weight, but become strangely unhelpful when you actually do.

During my most successful weight management period, I exercised regularly 5 days a week. I varied the types of exercise I did and often included some weightlifting with relatively lightweight (about 10-15 lbs.) dumbbells. My mother gave me a beautiful set of adjustable chrome-plated dumbbells that came in a nice carrying case so that I could take them when I traveled.

One day when I was sitting in the living room watching television, I was also doing reps with the bells. If you've ever lifted weights, you know that your muscles fatigue and it gets harder to do subsequent repetitions. As I was heading toward about 25 reps, my lifting would slow down. As I was taking advantage of the idle T.V.-watching time to get in some exercise, my father started remarking that I shouldn't be lifting weights because I was actually getting weaker (as evidenced by my slowing down). He also mocked the fact that I wasn't eating enough of the types of foods that would make me strong, particularly because I wasn't eating red meat (in favor of consuming only leaner meats like turkey and chicken). In essence, he was trying to dissuade me from continuing with the habits which had helped me lose weight. He also told me that, since losing weight, my nose looked a lot bigger.

I guess I could chalk his attitude up to not wanting me to become more sexually appealing as I naturally would as I lost weight. Fathers probably have a lot of ambivalence about their daughters' appearance because the idea that they're going to be with men is probably disturbing. However, he wasn't the only one who tried to sabotage my weight loss. My mother also made things harder for me by not preparing food in a manner which made it edible under my self-imposed restrictions. If I asked her not to put huge amounts of butter while preparing something like potatoes, noodles, etc. because then I couldn't eat it, she'd put the butter in anyway. I never asked her to change anything just for me or cook for me (I did much of my own food preparation). I only ever asked her to alter dishes which wouldn't suffer because of a requested change. All of the foods she heaped butter into could have had butter added by the individual after serving so no one's eating experience had to be diminished by my request, but she didn't do as I asked anyway.

My friends also exhibited curious behavior when dealing with me. I must state emphatically that I never was and never will be one of those dieting types who inflicts her opinions about calories, food, and nutrition on others. I know that there are a lot of obnoxious people who in the process of convincing themselves to avoid "bad" food can't help but try and spoil the party for everyone else. I was never like that. I kept my thoughts to myself unless asked.

Despite my limits, I still liked to socialize with friends in the types of places they liked to eat at. As I have previously mentioned, if I can't resist temptation when faced with food that is fattening, then I'm not ready to successfully deal with my problem. So, for example, if everyone wanted to go to a pizza place, I would go along and stick to the salad bar only. On more than one occasion, if I was denying myself the gooey pizza, someone would try to tell me I should have "just one piece".

One friend in particular tried to convince me to "live a little" and "just one piece won't hurt." To any friend of a person who is trying to lose weight, I would like to tell you that this is like insisting that one drink isn't going to hurt an alcoholic. Part of what makes resisting temptation easier through time is that you forget how appealing certain types of food are as the memory of their tastiness fades and is replaced by the memory of types of new, more nutritious foods that you frequently experience and enjoy. Reintroducing those foods back into your memory is just going to make it all the harder to avoid such things in the future.

I can't say why people tried to sabotage me with any certainty. I can speculate that they felt threatened in some fashion by my success or my exhibition of self-control. People are pretty narcissistic by nature and seeing someone lose weight or control their eating makes them reflect on their own perceived shortcomings in that regard. I also have wondered on occasion if a lot of people like having the "fat friend" who they can always feel superior to in terms of attractiveness. I can't tell you how many times I've read about the topic of weight and someone has said, "I'm fat, but nothing compared to how fat she is!" People like someone who is "worse" than themselves so they can feel better, and they're obviously willing to put their need to feel superior ahead of the health and well being of the people they (supposedly) care for.

Exercise, Good or Bad

Lately, there has been a lot of conflicting information about exercise and weight loss and control. For a few years, word was that walking for a half hour a day was good enough for you. Now, we're reading that it's not enough to actually lose weight, but it is good for your heart. Additionally, I've been reading lately that exercise simply is not useful at all when you want to lose weight because people who exercise just end up eating more.

The results of these studies are not only disheartening, but misleading. One of the problems with all surveys, studies, and tests is that they take a complex problem and oversimplify it so that they can get scientifically valid results. That is, they look at a limited number of factors and tend to watch behavior only over the short term (less than 2 years, in many cases). What is more, most researchers have a hypothesis before constructing their study and either consciously or unconsciously create conditions that will validate their theories.

If you scrutinize the information that is coming out carefully, you'll see that the interpretation is always spelled out in a particular way. One of the studies noted that certain types of exercise increased muscle mass and muscle burned about 40 more calories per day than fat and all it would take to mitigate any of the gains from having more muscle would be to eat one pat of butter more per day. While this is certainly so, the interpretation completely ignores the fact that you are burning more calories for the duration of the exercise (often around 100 calories or more) and that you are almost certainly suppressing your appetite for the time after exercising and possibly boosting your overall metabolism. In other words, exercising daily, even modestly, has the potential to burn around 150 calories a day or more from combined effects of aerobic activity and increased muscle mass. Even if you eat at a maintenance level (around 2000 calories for an average person), daily exercise should help you lose around a pound a month (possibly more).

Why do the study results focus only on increased muscle mass and calories burned at rest? Why do they assume that anyone who is trying to lose weight would simply decide to eat more just because their exercising happened to work up an appetite? My personal exercise habit is to get the exercise in a few hours after a meal and then rest and pretty much recover from the appetite suppression effects in about the right time for lunch or a planned snack. I don't eat more because I exercise even if I want to, and honestly, I don't find myself being greatly hungrier than usual because I exercise. I'm hungry and fighting it all of the time anyway so there's really not much of a difference.

I have to wonder what motivates this sort of reporting. Is it simply that the winds of information have been blowing one way for awhile so there's nothing new to say and they figure they might as well have them blow another way for a bit? Is it that they see the obesity problem getting worse so they assume they must create a reason?

I don't know why such discouraging news is being reported, and I do know that weight loss is actually more complex than "eat less, exercise more", but I do know that eating less and exercising more will eventually work for most people if they can hold the line against their biological and psychological impulses (which is no small task). My guess is that these studies are likely pointing to the fact that it is much harder to do these things than expected and that people who try to exercise to lose weight end up eating more without realizing it or believe their exercise is burning more calories so they can justify a little indulgence.

The answer would seem to be not to say that exercise doesn't help people lose weight, but rather to educate people about the effects such that they are more cautious about how much they are eating. Essentially, people need to know that exercise when you want to reduce your weight doesn't buy you much of anything in terms of being able to eat more.